There is such a thing as good fats!

Jun 20, 2016

This weeks tweak. Eat some fat - but before you reach for the Mars bars, read one!

As a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s I couldn't help but absorb the message that FAT was a bad word.

Walk down a supermarket aisle and the messages were (sometimes still are) "low fat" this and "low fat" that. More often than not these labels appeared on the most processed, altered and manufactured foods. And we all bought them, thinking they were healthy. How wrong we were.

You see this message came about because excessive fat consumption was (still is) associated with our number 1 killer - heart disease.

SImplified messages are easy to swallow but hard to digestIf there's one thing the food industry (and we ourselves) love, it's a simplified message about food. FAT IS BAD. We can all understand that. Easy.

Unfortunately, the truth is more nuanced.

Right now there's a war on sugar and carbs in general, but as i'll discuss next week, we're repeating the same mistakes we made with the low fat message. Again, the truth is more complex than trying to blame and then exclude one major nutrient group.

So, back to this weeks' tweak. Eat some high fat foods. But since we're The Wholefood Revolution we are of course going to ask you to eat your fats from whole food sources.

I'm talking about avocados, nuts of all kinds, additive free nut butters, seeds, oily fish. These are the best sources of fat in your diet. Eat these fat containing foods with a smile on your face and know that this was the way nature intended you to consume fats. Go easy on any processed fats, so I'm talking about vegetable oils in particular. Don't eat margarine! A little bit of butter is ok, but remember that while it is a traditional food, it is still processed and a concentrated source of fat calories. It's also missing the fibre, vitamins, minerals and micronutrients found in whole foods.